Grant!
Fourth-grade teacher Julie Coke is excited about giving her students a hands-on experience as they learn about the properties of matter in her science class at Franklin Elementary School. With a limited budget for field trips and extra materials for hands-on experiments, she applied for a Target Field Trip Grant and was pleasantly surprised when she was notified that not only her students, but also the entire fourth grade, would be able to travel to Nashville’s Adventure Science Center for the lesson.
Through Target’s unique grant program, Mrs. Coke was awarded $500 to make the field trip a reality. On February 23, the students will take part in the Science Center’s education program called “What’s the Matter?” It is designed to help students understand the various states of matter in fun demonstrations and exciting experiments using liquid nitrogen. Students will also become part of the experience as they role-play atoms in an activity designed to show them how atoms move differently in a solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. The Center’s educational outreach programs are designed to fit hand in hand with the state curriculum.
While her children could conduct limited applications in the classroom, the Adventure Science Center’s program offers teaching methods in a large-group format with materials that were not part of the school’s budget. “Research proves that children learn better when they are involved in a hands-on approach,” Mrs. Coke said. “I know that through this exploration they will reach a better understanding of the structure and properties of matter. The experience is important because it will help students connect and apply knowledge of matter to the real world.”
The Target Field Trip Grants Program has distributed 5,000 grants totaling $4 million this year to education professionals to help fill gaps created by budget shortages. In addition to the covering the cost of the field trip, Target has provided Mrs. Coke with a box of materials, including a clipboard, a $20 digital camera gift card, Target brand hand sanitizer, wipes, tissues and bandages, a 3M tape dispenser and Post-It Notes and pens.
The Franklin Special School District is a K-8 public school system with serving 3,850 students in seven schools. The District gets its unique name from a special act of the state legislature that provides the Board of Education its own taxing authority, enabling the schools to be funded appropriately in order to maintain “Excellence in Teaching and Learning for All.” For more information about the district, please visit www.fssd.org on the Internet.
